Why Critical Race Theory Matters

Abstract

On September 22, 2020, the 45th President of the United States issued an “Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping.” This executive order took specific aim at Critical Race Theory (CRT) as the ideology responsible for creating a supposed “different vision” of America. This comment argues that CRT provides society a necessary (even crucial) way to look at how the law and other policies within institutions, such as schools, function in ways that racially privilege some and discriminate against others—it is an additional way of seeing, an alternative lens. CRT better prepares us as teachers, leaders, researchers, and activists to be institutionally and pedagogically antiracist. CRT serves to expose, analyze, and challenge majoritarian stories of racialized privilege. CRT can help to strengthen traditions of social, political, and cultural survivance and justice. CRT teaches us that “construction of another world—a socially and racially just world—is possible” (Yosso 14–15). Critical Race Theory matters.